Avatar Editing Done, Says Cameron

While discussing whether or not James Cameron will be "King of the World" again with the release of Avatar, the Philippine Daily Inquirer also got the director to talk about the current status of the production and his thoughts on his aliens, the Na'vi.

Avatar Talk

Though Cameron will likely be working on the film's visual effects up until its theatrical release in December, he does say that the film is completely edited.

“In the most important respects as a director, I’m 100 percent done because the film is shot and edited,” the silver-haired auteur replied when we asked what he still needs to do between now and December. “My job for the next few months until we deliver at the end of November is more as a visual effects person, working to make sure that the shots look real, that they’re all up to an even standard.”

“In terms of a film’s cut, the studio has seen it,” he declared. “They were pretty happy with it. You saw finished material so there are whole sections of the film that are actually done. It’s just a question of getting in some of the remaining scenes from what we call template level where it looks like a video game up to the level of photo-realism. All the template stuff was turned over to WETA (Digital, Peter Jackson’s visual effects company) like a year ago or in some cases, six months ago for the shots that will come in last. The process is quite labor intensive. I’m working 14, 16 hours a day but all the major creative decisions have been made.”

While people have complained that the film looks too computer-generated, there is no arguing that the planet looks incredibly real. Cameron explains that the rock is called Pandora and is very Earth-like, as we saw. The catch is that humans can't breathe the air, so they either have to use breathing equipment or, you guessed it, an Avatar. Displayed in the trailer, an Avatar is a biological host for one's consciousness.

If you've been keeping up with the Avatar updates, then you aready know that James Cameron had to battle to keep his Na'vi race blue. It turns out that Fox was also hesitant about them having tails as well.

On Avatars having tails, James smiled and said, “The studio asked me the same question. They asked, ‘Do they have to have tails?’ We’re very happy with the way the Na’vi worked out because what we found is the tail and the ears show the characters’ emotional state. A cat owner knows that you can tell a cat’s mood by what its tail is doing. Just as we created a verbal language, we created a vocabulary for the tail and the ears.”

James Cameron ends the discussion by mentioning that he is open to a sequel, just as long as the first installment makes money.